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Self Cleaning Mouse
mikesd81 writes "LEWIS Wire is reporting on a self-cleaning mouse that disables the survival of bacteria with an auto-disinfecting surface. From the article: 'According to a recent survey from the University of Arizona, the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat. Despite this, office workers rarely have time to clean their desktops frequently or thoroughly enough to be effective. As a result, the presence of microbes contributes to the spread of pneumonia, the flu, pink eye and strep throat, among other extremely contagious viruses.'"
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Mapping of mouse brains....
If you don't clean the environment you occupy for 1/3rd of your day, then heck, you deserve to get sick.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
We just figured out 90% of the mouse's dna, and already it's cleaning itself... very nice !
If you "disinfect" a surface, it's like clear-cutting a rain-forest. You've upset the balance, making a fresh new playground where the really baad and hardy weeds might take hold.
It licks it's own balls?
so how long will that survive on the surface? It'll have to be tough to withstand ordinary wear and tear... the contact points where my fingers hold the mouse on my desktop are already worn smooth and the mouse has only been in use for 6 months... sounds like snake-oil to me especially the nano-particle crap...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Compulsive telephone sanitisers. I never caught a flu from MY mouse.... What are they worried about, computers catching a virus?
the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat Clearly, people are doing something wrong with their desks or with their toilets.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Guess I didn't need to buy that autoclave.
Yes, you touch your mouse often, but it is just a tiny fraction of what you touch so this mouse is just a waste of money. OK, not a big one for a change.
On the other hand, using such surfaces in hospital for example on doorknobs or armrests may really be helpfull.
It is no surprise the average desktop has too many viruses, what do you expect when the average desktop is running windows? But the Fine Article seems to have confused virus with bacteria. Just switch to Linux and everything will be hunky dory.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So are people supposed to wipe their butt with this thing or what? (Just trying to correlate toilet seats, bacteria and an antiseptic mouse.)
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
The coating uses two mechanisms to deactivate enzymes and proteins to prevent a wide spectrum of bacteria, virus, fungi, and algae from surviving on the surface of the mouse.
At the risk of saying the obvious, viruses don't need to survive on the surface of the mouse. They only become alive (by some definitions of alive) inside a host cell. They don't need active enzymes to remain being able to infect cells.
Also, what the fsck does 30x more tracking power mean?
A self cleaning mouse, that is cool. You really want to grab my attention. Try a self cleaning house, now that would be a product anyone would want. Tell you the truth what i really need is a self cleaning car for my wife, now that is a different story though.
They help keep the immune system strong. If there's nothing for it to fight off... well... it'll just get lazy. Stay dirty; exercise that immune system!
Face it, you never catch them all. So some survive, that are more resilent against the agent. They breed. And bacteria do that FAST. The resistance gets inherited. And then again. You are actually causing some un-natural selection that way, until you end up with bacteria that are super aggressive and super resistant against your antibac.
Why do you think the most violent, nasty and resistant bacteria stems are found in hospitals?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Next-up: The self-cleaning toilet seat.
It'll keep the 400:1 ratio back up.
Of course, it's only a bit of time before some renegade made a non-self-cleaning mouse in the form of a toilet seat.
Have you read my journal today?
For the ball-less mice: bacteria can also be killed with a laser beam.
Well new nano technology allows us to create surfaces that no bacteria can live on. So you don't have to worry about good OR bad bacteria, and its smart for surfaces that people often touch. Otherwise I agree.
Toilet seats have very few bacteria as they are made of non-porous material. So trying to say they have 400 times the bacteria is not really that outrageous of an amount.
Wow...so many viruses on my desktop. Does Microsoft make that too?
Looks like I can no longer have lunch at my desk. I'll have to eat the restrooms for now on. I'll take the handicap stahl if no one minds.
I didn't see anywhere in the article about prevent oil and dirt build up. That's my main problem. My oily and sweaty hands like to build up these nice dirt outlines that I scrap off with my fingernails every month or so. I guess I can start wearing rubber gloves when I touch the mouse.
Can I bum a sig?
Okay, just to clear this up: the average toilet seat is, believe it or not, one of the most sterile and least bacteria-ridden places you will find anywhere in your household. It is usually a barren plastic surface with little purchase for bacteria or moisture, it is cleaned and disinfected more than most surfaces, and the only real chance it has of catching anything that bacteria feed on is if someone ends up smearing crap on it - I'm really hope that's not the norm. In addition, what is unfortunately likely to end up on the seat is urine, which is totally sterile and would kill rather than feed most bacteria. Anyone who ever cleans their house will have a pretty sterile seat, and there is not much chance that anything you do pick up on the back of your legs is going to be transferred directly to your face by your hand.
Just about the opposite of all the points above can be said about your keyboard and mouse. It should come as absolutely no surprise that these things are riddled with bacteria...
As is your skin. All of it. You are fucking covered in the little guys, and it's rarely a problem. If you're the sort of person who's likely to get sick from a mouse that hasn't been disinfected, your life is too sterile for you to survive easily in the wild. Self-cleaning mice and mobility-scooters for the morbidly obese - they amount to the same thing: people's poor lifestyles causing them to be unfit to survive normally. I understand why people need these things, but if they'd exercised moderation in all things from the start, they wouldn't be in this situation.
Meta will eat itself
Protect the environment of I'll F****** kill yah!!
Not to speak of public terminals... uah... there you can usually SEE the bacteria!
Does that mean that I should put my desk in the toilets so that I would have less bacterias?
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Rumours have it that, as proof that this really works, the manufacturer is considering a 30-day trial account to one of the most sultry pr0n-sites. ;P
That's nothing. I have a self-cleaning dog. A friend of mine watched my dog clean himself and said, "Man, I wish I could do that."
I told him, "You better pet him first; he might bite."
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
According to a recent survey from the University of Arizona, the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.
There's even more bacteria INSIDE YOU! And no, they're not only "your" bacteria. They are in fact bacteria that you ate, breathed in and so on and so on. They live and breed inside you, and defecate inside you! They also *eat* from whatever is laying around (i.e. YOU).
Shocking? Well it better not be, since they're not going away any time soon. I'm sick of gem-counting revelations and toilet seat comparisons.
I'm proud to say I use a regular dirty mouse and keyboard and I'm still alive and healthy. If someone is concerned he might catch something bad from a computer mouse, he wouldn't be alive to buy this product anyway.
Cats are already self-cleaning. It was only a mater of time.
Seriously...what a stupid comparison.
How about comparing the number of harmful bacteria on each?
Plus, as others have pointed out, the toilet seat is very often a clean surface due to its being regularly cleaned.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
I'd only add that it's not really necessary for your own personal mouse, but might be a good idea for a public terminal or kiosk (or public toilet?). I don't think that many folks are giving themselves pink-eye.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My job is desktop support, walking around a couple of organisations and helping users sort out their problems. I always thought it was the users that made me sick, now I know it's their mice too.
I read this as I eat my breakfast. time for more napkins methinks...
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
Mouse? Why they're trying to do something with computer mice?
:). Average mobile phone gathers much more bacterias that anything else around you. It's due to simple fact:
There's much more bacterias on keyboards, phones and, most important, mobiles (cell-phones for all you americans
It's nice and worm (you know how it is after 30min of call) and because it touches your face it gathers a lot of moisture and dead skin.
jackharrer
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
...for anyone who pushes their mouse around with their tongue.
I'm surprised, though, that the marketing idiots didn't come up with an ant-terrorism angle - after all, if your mouse kills little bad bug things it'll Keep You Safe(tm) during a biological attack!
I want autocleaning desktop.
Wash your hands.
Thankyou for your attention.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
They should call it a self-disinfecting mouse or something like that. A self-cleaning mouse would be one that saves you the chore of cleaning all the gunk deposited by the ball on the tension roller and optical interrupter shafts.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I want self-cloning mice!
foo mane padme hum
The solution is just to move everyone's desk into the restroom.
Seriously: if the current contamination really were a problem, we would all be dead. But we aren't, and why? Because the human body has a immune system. So I bet, such a self-cleaning mouse, or even completely sterile desks deployed everywhere wouldn't have any impact on the infection rates.
Actually, desinfecting too much actually leads to other problems. Current studies suggest that too much hygiene may be a big factor in the recent increases of allergies. Also, fighting too aggressively against any kind of etiologic agents only produces more resistant etiologic agents. A prominent example is the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a Staph.A. strain that developed antibiotic resistance and is responsible for a good share of all nosocomial infections (i.e. infections you get that you get in hospital but are otherwise unrelated to your actual treatment there).
IANAMD (I am not an MD), but I have an education as combat medic in the Austrian Army where infectiology is a huge subject during education.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
I'm no biologist, but isn't that just 'upping the ante'?
By making a service no current bug can live on, won't it leave a whole new world for tha one bug that happens to mutate in such a way to be tolerant(considering about divisions bacteria make with the percentage of mutation which is only likelier to increase given adverse conditions that may cripple its DNA). A la current anti-bacterial super-bug problem?
Maybe THAT'S where all the E. Coli are coming from?
The problem with that is erosion. Surfaces that people often touch tend to erode slowly from people rubbing their extremities on them. While that erosion is negligible as far as the integrity of the whole thing is concerned, how about the nano surface? I think that after a while the nanostructures on the surface would get smoothed out, causing the surface to lose its antibecterial properties.
Nonetheless it does sound like a good idea. For non-mouse environments.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Why doesn't some manufacturer design a mouse and keyboard that you can clean in a dishwasher?
(Also iPods, 'phones, tv remotes and all types of electronic goods in all types of washer. NB patent trolls, if this is original, I claim prior art by publishing here. PS eeuw)
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Will my body eventually produce antibodies to everything that infests my workspace?
Join Tor today!
I wonder if this mouse could have reasonable application in environments which require a higher than normal level of sterilization. For example, there are many biology labs that culture cells of some sort that need to be kept sterile. Just from anecdotal evidence (i.e. walking around and going "ugh" at the sight of those mice), the average office mouse in almost all environments is pretty darn filthy.
Is that the same thing as "enabling the disability to survive"? I hope this isn't another attempt to rename "kill" as in "liquidate".
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
How does an Anti-Bacterial surface help control the spread of viruses exactly? I can see this helping with Strep, and Staph but not viruses.
I just pet my mouse. Surely this won't kill me?
And the rabbitses..
The problem is, when you mention bacteria to the average person, they think bad things because we've learned that bad bacteria can make us sick. That's why I hate most studies that proclaim the bacteria count is such and such.
Unfortunately, these "studies" are usually trying to convince us to buy an anti-bacterial soap, or as in this case a self cleaning mouse so they play on people's fears and doubts to make them want to buy it, ie... it's just FUD.
My cat has been doing this for years.
You're right. These mice will be the natural selection grounds for oxygen radical resistant bacterial strains, maybe even incoorperating them into their metabolic pathways to produce cheap ATP. Next you will find your printer clogged up with strange pulsating mounds of glee. From there the bug will spread in any electronic device where electric charge creates free radicals, bringing down civilisation as we know it.
Has anyone checked these oxygen-radical producing mice for connections with muslim-radicals?
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!
Interesting product, illiterate article.
Fomites (inanimate objects that can spread disease by holding infective organisms between hosts) can spread organisms, but office equipment, including mice and keyboards, has never been shown to contribute to the spread of serious disease. In a hospital environment, especially in something like an ICU where you have multiple providers working with the same computers, this might be an interesting thing to study. In the office, there's no point. You're at far more danger from shaking hands with your co-workers than you are from using their mouse. Tellingly, neither the author of the study nor the manufacturer quote any actual scientific study showing that an antibacterial mouse makes a difference anywhere. This is a talisman, pure and simple.
Which doesn't stop the writer of the article, who breathlessly refers to "the spread of pneumonia, the flu, pink eye and strep throat, among other extremely contagious viruses." As a physician who is continually explaining the difference between viruses and bacteria, and the difference between diseases caused by transmission of specific organisms (like strep) and general conditions that have hundreds of causes (like pink eye or pneumonia), this sentence made me twitch violently. Suffice it to say that with this single phrase, the author ensured that I would ignore the rest of the article as an obvious waste of time.
Fortunately, the manufacturer of the mouse did better. I love the disclaimer:
And there you have it. Remember, don't ingest the damn thing under ANY circumtances.
And of the other 3%, most of them we couldn't survive without and the primary way they can harm us is by dying. The human lifeform is symbiotic with a whole bunch of bacterial species, which do everything from cleaning your eyeballs to assisting with digestion. The biosphere relies on bacteria to maintain everything from soil conditions to oxygen levels in the atmosphere.
Killing bacteria to stop infections is like chopping off people's hands to stop shootings - before they happen.
So... are you feeling lucky?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/infections/lung/p neumonia.html
"The viruses and bacteria that cause pneumonia are contagious and are usually found in fluid from the mouth or nose of an infected person. Illness can spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes on a person, by sharing drinking glasses and eating utensils, and when a person touches the used tissues or handkerchiefs of an infected person."
So essentially, try and avoid touching the mouse or keyboard if they're still wet with someone else's mucuus. Which is something I've been doing for years. Just in case it's not mucuus...
I was eating chips when I read that!
- Francis Ocoma
Please wait while Sig Request is being processed...
Creating a self-cleaning mouse is all very well, but how long until we can do this for humans? We can cure practically every form of cancer in mice, but reproducing those results in humans is notoriously difficult.
:(
We all know what a boon to humanity it would be to have self-cleaning geeks, but I don't expect to see one within ten years, if at all in my lifetime. This is mmore flying cars and moon domes technology
.evom ton seod gis eht
too true
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What's this common dread of "bacteria"? You have to look at the big picture. 97% of bacterial species have not the slightest ability to harm us. A typical surface has millions of these critters. Most of them are your friends, as they help crowd out the really bad varieties.
Agreed, but it's the 3% (often from other people) that can get you sick. During flu season, people generally pick up the bug from hand contact. You touch something that someone else has touched, or you shake hands, your own hands end up touching your nose, mouth, eyes, etc. Washing your hands regularly is the best approach, but if it's inevitable that we touch other people or their stuff, it can help to keep our surfaces clean. If you can stay home and sit in your underwear all day long, then no problem.
If you "disinfect" a surface, it's like clear-cutting a rain-forest. You've upset the balance, making a fresh new playground where the really baad and hardy weeds might take hold.
But sometimes waiting for the process of a natural selection isn't possible or desirable so cutting down diseased trees to limit the spread of a disesase can sometimes be the best approach. Doesn't work with co-workers, of course.
Just bleach your whole place, and seal it with plastic. Then stay in side.
The process isn't that hard, they have been doing stuff like this for years. They inject Anti-bacterial disinfectants into the plastics before they mold them.
They have similar mats in showers, boats, dairy farms http://www.animat.ca/.
I'm suprised they haven't done this before. Inter-office disease spreading via keyboards and such is a HUGE problem, costing billions per year.
Think about it? How many times have you been nailed by a cold going "around" the office?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Isn't this just creating evolutionary pressure in favour of disinfectant-resistant bacteria?
http://outcampaign.org/
Oh it would have an effect, just not the one you think it would.
If we all grew up in an environment where these devices were prevalent, devoid of bacteria and organisms in our air and on our surfaces, the first time our grandchildren came in contact with them, they'd probably die.
Witness the huge rise in children who are developing lifelong, serious allergy problems, because their parents never let them leave the house or touch pets or anything else for the first few years of their lives. Children NEED to be exposed to allergens, toxins, bacteria.. to develop and strengthen an immune system.
There is a similar parallel.. when people are prescribed antibiotics, and don't finish ALL of the pills to completion. I've seen this dozens of times, where someone is prescribed 60 pills, 2/day, and after 1 week of taking the pills they feel better, so they stop taking the rest of them.
A month later, they're in the hospital, because the virus in their system was diminished, then was exposed to the antibiotics but was not killed, and it grew stronger.. and now no antibiotics work to kill it off. If you run the full course as prescribed, you completely eradicate the virus from your system, and it doesn't get a chance to grow stronger and kill you.
We need immune systems, and we need to be exposed to bacteria and viruses to continue to grow stronger ourselves.
Studies have shown that a workplace phone shared by several people is a great way to share the common cold and similar diseases. Maybe someone needs to make a handset that cleans itself.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
for mouse-cleaners to join telephone sanitizers and hairdressers on the Golgafrinchem "B" Ark?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
This is definitely something we take for granted, expecially those who have jobs that require them to work on alot of different workstations. Get in the habit of treating your hands like they could always be infected with something. wash them frequently, and never rub your eyes with them.
I find the best way to clean a keyboard is dump a cup of coffee on it. The replacement is generally spotless! (remind me not to try to disasemble another keyboard--obviously made by aliens)
I also wonder if there's a difference in the type of bacteria. I would personally feel more comfortable eating of my (filthy, filthy) desk that off a toilet seat. I know that's psychological, but also, there's probably not any Trich on my desk. Or E coli.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Wouldn't it be easier to just make a copper mouse? Copper kills germs.
Plus after time your mouse will go from copper color to green, so you'll get 2 styles for the price of 1
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Someone once said: I get up, shower, ride a bus to work, use my computer, use the community coffee pot, shake many hands, use my neigbor's phone, and then go pee and wash my hands - while my penis is probably the cleanest thing I've touched today.
I wrote about that, please read my comment. Whether the mouse or the desk gets desinfected, it makes no difference because the germs are everywhere.
I also mentioned the part that lack of contact with etiologic agents leads to a higher risks of suffering from allergies later on.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
...not nose. Was a bit, umm, worried there...
Bacteria clogging up the printer? That's easy to solve -- just print out something toxic, like a full-nude picture of Bea Arthur. That ought to sterilize the entire paper pathway.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I for one, welcome our bacterial overloards
I say we build an arc to carry away these people working on such useless projects. We could probably get rid of a good third of the world if we were to just send off all the hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone (and mouse) sanitizers. Then we could finally live in peace...
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Having tried TiO2 surfaces and silver particle wear I can say they are quite nice. Especially the TiO2 in ceramic. It feels nice and clean. The silver stuff is, meh. Both technologies are big in Japan now, and TiO2 seems most versatile being both human friendly and nice for building exteriors but the silver stuff is a bit oversold.
I believe the British military first designed silver particle embedded antibacterial clothing, and I don't want to wear anything that has really nanosized particles of anything in it but this is not really nano. This summer in Japan everything had silver (and it would have been worse without it, since the sun seldom shone in Tokyo). I have silver particle deodorant spray, it doesn't do much except one really nasty thing: if you spray it at yourself while wearing a dress shirt you better wash it before going outside, or your will get little black dots just like a photograph with silver based film. You have to spray before wearing the clothes. Also I don't think it really has that strong an action. A little bit maybe but I also have a few silver particle embedded handkerchiefs (supposed to not get funky after you wipe off sweat with them) but an experiment showed that they do get funky and possibly part of it is discoloration due to the embedded silver. You can't just keep using it for days. So I don't think this silver stuff is that great, just wash the darned (hah) stuff.
One thing I can tell you is that while I am definitely not a neat freak, on the other hand I am very allergic to the mold or maybe acid from ink/paper deterioration (?) you get in old paper. Even just papers left in an office environment for a week will itch, and I can read a morning paper but will itch from one left in a bag or purchased in the afternoon. So I am sensitive to bacteria levels and even if they are not itchy am generally aware about it.
Okay so what do we really need? We need TiO2 building coverings and in bathrooms and desks because it feels great and works. I *think* it is really safe but don't quote me. We really need self-disinfecting TiO2 coated handholds/straps in subways and public places. A disinfecting (alcohol based?) deodorant that has been sold in some places works extremely well.. that is why people smell. So disinfecting is good in some places. We really need disinfecting keyboards with some way so that crumbs, dust, and whatever does not get stuck inside your keyboard forever. That is apparently a really dirty place. As for this mouse? Well when I go to an Internet manga cafe they provide wipes (usually disinfecting) and I do wipe the keyboard and mouse, they get really grubby just from ordinary use. But it is probably better to just wipe it with a wipe. Use a human friendly one, some industrial wipes they sell with something like rubbing alcohol are bad. The idea that you can disinfect your desk with your mouse is totally dumb. But if there was a keyboard with a TiO2 surface INSIDE it I would be thinking pretty hard about it.
One nitpick, I agree pretty much with what you say, but:
A month later, they're in the hospital, because the virus in their system was diminished, then was exposed to the antibiotics but was not killed, and it grew stronger..
Antibiotics do not kill viruses, they kill bacteria. Viruses are immune to antibiotics.
You don't have to take my word for it.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If more people would surf porn with gloves on, we wouldn't need something like this.
How hard is it to get a frickin' mouse with a frickin' laser beam on its head?
:(){
Bacterial presence is only one aspect of cleanliness.
If this mouse were truly self-cleaning, it would have some way of automatically scraping of the schmutz that collects on the underside and where the fingers rest.
(In this respect, the optical mouse is the greatest advance in mouse technology ever. I really don't miss jabbing a pencil eraser into the empty socket of my ball mouse, trying to coax strips of black gunk off the rollers every couple of months.)
Man, I must have been reeeeaaaallly tired to type up that last bit...I don't think I've had that many typos and ommited words in a looooong time....
Resistant, sure. Aggressive, ??
Of course they're aggressive. You just killed their family, and tried to kill them. They're pissed, they're armed, and you gotta sleep sometime.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
UV light is required to activate TiO2 coatings. Even with the silver particle addition you still need natural sunlight (i.e. lower levels of UV light) for activation. So unless the mouse is going to be outdoors... you really can't beat regular handwashing as someone already pointed out in this thread. My friend Brent who knows a lot more chemistry than I pointed out this inconsistency when I inquired about this very mouse a couple of days ago. He sent me this link: http://www.nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=833 Also, the implication is that this mouse is suitable for "public" environments (libraries, doctor's offices...) It sounds strange for a wireless mouse.
I always been taught rats were the rodents that spread diseases. That only shows how much we've progressed since the dark Middle Ages...
If there are no bugs for the immune system to take potshots at, it starts attacking the body. It also gets out of practice attacking bugs.
'TOP TIP' is funny but certainly valid. The second, and final top tip would be, "Don't rub your eyes". I would bet that 90% of cold and flu infections are self-inoculations from eye rubbing.
I call BS on that sentence: "As a result, the presence of microbes contributes to the spread of pneumonia, the flu, pink eye and strep throat, among other extremely contagious viruses." Funny that no evidence is cited. Skin contains natural antimicrobial agents and skin is not a particularly friendly place for bacteria. Dry surfaces are even less friendly.
Touching the dry, smooth surface of a mouse that someone else has touched has got to be less dangerous than shaking hands with them.
All this "Lysol kills germs" and "Keyboards have more microbes than the toilet" strikes me as an attempt to see useless products through FUD. They never cite any epidemiology that shows that it is an important route for the communication of real, actual human diseases.
This is not to say that you shouldn't wash your hands after you've engaged in, um, activity that might transfer colon bacteria to them, and it's well-established that colds are transmitted by shaking hands. (But just trying saying to someone, "Excuse me for not shaking hands, I have a cold" and see what reaction you get...) Or that hospitals don't need to clean their environmental surfaces.
But, really, your average serving of yogurt probably has more live microbes in it than your toilet and your keyboard combined.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"..to a recent survey from the University of Arizona, the average desk harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat."
think I'm gonna go ahead and clean my desk now...
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
1. Dead Skin building up
2. grease from the living skin
3. Profit?!?
Will someone think of the mouse balls?
This is probably true, but assuming bacteria did evolve to be able to survive on this surface, what are the chances that they would also be able to survive and reproduce inside the human body?
The objective isn't necessarily making a surface that's totally impossible for bacteria to live on, it's to make a surface that's so different from the inside of the body, that the bacteria that could concievably live on said surface wouldn't be capable of harming you.
Sorta like how there are bacteria evolved to live in the very harsh environments surrounding deep-sea vents (high pressure, high temperature, etc.), I don't doubt that over time some strains will evolve to survive just about anywhere. If in the process of evolving to live there, they lose the ability to live in our lungs, so much the better.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They live and breed inside you
Little bastards; who said they're allowed to get it on in there? If I'm not getting any, nobody better be getting any, capiche?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Mobile phones are generally only used by one person; thus they're only covered with your own bacteria, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to disinfect them.
After all, if you touch the phone to your face, and then wait a while and touch it to your face again, you didn't accomplish anything. The bacteria that were on your face are still on your face; even if you hadn't used the phone they just would have stayed there.
Now, if you had a phone that was shared by large numbers of people, there might be a reason to disinfect it so you didn't spread things, but even then I'm not sure how dirty your face is. Your hands are probably much worse, and people still seem to shake hands without hesitation. Regular handwashing would probably be more effective at preventing the spread of disease than whether your mobile phone is oozing Lysol.
The objects which it makes sense to make self-disinfecting are those which are used by large numbers of people, and are principally touched with their hands. The keyboards and mice of public terminals strike me as a good use, but more than that, I'd like to see the interior door-handles of public restrooms made self-disinfecting. (Or mandate that all restroom doors have to be free-swinging and open outwards, so you could just push them.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I thought it said, "Self Cleaning House"....
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Except influenze is caused by a VIRUS, NOT a bacteria. How is this anti-bacterial mouse going to protect against the Flu?
The mark of a mature person is not creating arbitrary criteria for considering others mature.
If you "disinfect" a surface, it's like clear-cutting a rain-forest. You've upset the balance, making a fresh new playground where the really baad and hardy weeds might take hold.
/.'ers don't take showers...
That explains why
along with the hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, and telephone sanitizers
"sure, I always wash my hands before taking a piss -- hey, I wouldn't want to get my cock dirty!"
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
And I'm sure you're the type not to wipe your ass after taking a crap.
Thanks ma'am! have a good day
In various studies of public washrooms, they have found that the toilet seats (other than those that somebody 'caught the edge of' while dropping a brown bomb) are usually the cleanest in terms of germs. Now the toilet paper dispensors, walls, etc tend to suffer from splashback in small amounts of fecal matter (yuck), and the really bad culprits tend to be... guess what... the antibacterial soap dispensors (since it's what you touch after you wipe but before you're disinfected), the paper towel dispensor winders, and other related items.
As far as actual succeptibility to germs, I find that my job (working in schools) tends to expose me to tons nasties and the only time I really get sick is when my immuno-response is down due to my body being worn out from seasonal allergies, overwork, etc.
not cleaner. Especially when kids are around. Will they get sick? Yep. They will also build resistence. Standard cleaning should be enough
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
quigonn said: I think this conclusion very much depends upon what you are using to fight the etiologic agents. There is no question that we are facing a severe problem with antibiotic resistance but I don't think there is a threat of resistance to alcohol, Clorox, or simple soap and water.
The mouse in question uses a combination of Titanium Dioxide and Silver. I'm not an expert but this seems closer to alcohol and Clorox than it is to the type of antibiotics to which resistance can actually become a problem.
quigonn said: Again, I think you've overstated your case. Because we have an immune system, not all infections lead to death. But this does not imply that infections do not cause problems, nor does it imply that lack of hygiene is risk free even if the threat of death is small.
AFAIK, washing your hands frequently is still considered one of the simplest and most effective ways of protecting yourself against infection. Yet many people don't and they haven't all died out. If I applied your logic to this situation then I would conclude that there is no benefit to washing ones hands since they are still alive.
No one is saying "use this new mouse or die!". But the mouse could still be useful if it reduces the number of times per year a person gets sick.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Link? It's not what you think. I've just got this band holding my radio station hostage, and it's one of their demands.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
So how does the bacteria on a mouse compare with your car keys? The currency in your wallet? Your wallet? The average doorknob? This is just a scam to sell you an expensive mouse. Plus, if it actually does have some kind of chemistry that kills bacteria, I'm not so sure I want to put my hands on it for long periods of time...
And middle managers, hairdressers, and the like. And a 'B' ark to put them on. And shoot their asses into space. Whereupon we will all die from a disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
My book, podcast
Actually, counting cells we're not even close to being a majority in our own bodies. Some figures suggest that we have 10 times the amount of microorganisms in our intestines than the number of cells we are made up of "ourselves". For more interesting facts about why the stupid view on bacteria some likes to sell us are way over-simplified: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora (with a lengthy list of references in case you feel like making up your own mind).
Disinfecting the hell out of everything isn't a good thing. It's pretty much accepted that having a certain low level of exposure to germs will keep your defenses up. There have been studies that indicate that people (especially children) who live in antiseptic conditions tend to get sick more often.
I'm pretty much a slob, and I get sick less than almost anyone else at the company.
I agree that if someone who has pinkeye or strep or something like that uses your keyboard/mouse/etc, yeah, clean it. But I'm the only one that ever touches my computer, except maybe 10 times a year, so there's not much point in me cleaning something that only contains either benign bacteria or stuff I'm already immune to.
Wow. That's a great euphemism right there. "Your pet puppy had his survival disabled by a truck, son."
Why can't they just say it kills bacteria?
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
an antibacterial surface on a mouse would not affect all those "extremely contagious" viruses mentioned later in the same sentence. i'm also a little curious as to how much effect this mouse will truly have when the rest of the surfaces on the desk (like the keyboard, for instance) are still not cleaned/disinfected. personally, being in a job where i travel 99% of the time, i live on my laptop, so until the keyboard/track pad/pointing stick "self-disinfects" or better yet, disinfects all of the surrounding surfaces (airplane tray tables, floors in airports, other people's desks, the storage room at the client site) that i end up working on, i think i'm still pretty much screwed.
Welcome our self-cleaning mouse overlords...?
Damn, right when I thought I had it too.
I get nervous every time I hear the words "self-cleaning". Reminds me of the problems in Vietnam when the military told our soldiers that the M-16 was "self-cleaning"...
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Ask old people whether they knew anyone who was allergic, say, 40 years ago.
You really didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyhow, youngster.
As far as I recall (I AM old after all, and my memory is bad, right?), waaaaay back 40 years ago people had all kinds of allergies.
Ask someone old about Sun City in Arizona.
It's full of folks who were suffering from allergies, who moved to a "Desert Environment" for relief, starting at the turn of the century.
But then, I may just be fabricating this as I'm so &%$#*^ old...
I think everything you wrote has merit. But you missed a couple of things.
...urine, which is totally sterile...
At first perhaps, but after it's been sitting there for a while, it starts giving off a progressively stronger odor, doesn't it? Some type of active decomposition must be going on there, otherwise you wouldn't be smelling anything.
More than that however, the big point that you missed is that it is sterile in normal people. It's precisely the people who are leaking blood cells into their urine that I'd be the most worried about. No, you're not likely to step into a stall after someone like that has been through ahead of you, but when the next modern-day SARS, ebola, or bubonic plague occurs, it's precisely the morons out there that think that even a trivial effort to wash their hands and keep surfaces clean is actually a bad thing who will risk winding up spreading the new disease the most.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
OK I look at this.. and I see something that could have been good.. Keep germs away.. Nice.. Works well. Why not have a U/V light inside that would turn on for like a minute and kill all the germs and then shut off. It could even do it while your hand is on it.. there would be no harm to your eyes as long as it is made properly and you do not look directly at it
Excuse me for my bad English, but isn't self-cleaning mouse a hamster?
I have a self-cleaning mouse, but fortunately he can't reach my computer.
There's even more bacteria INSIDE YOU!
But there I'm no Soviet Russian!